June 25, 2004
Service Oriented Architecture Presentation
The Pennsylvania State University has produced a very good powerpoint presentation outlining what Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is, its relationship with Business Process Management (BPM) and where these concepts have evolved from.
The coolest little game
This has got to be one of the most addictive flash games I have seen for a while:
http://www.kiteretsu.jp/on/tontie/tontie.swf
June 24, 2004
How to implement a DMZ
Lockergnome has a great little article describing how to implement a simple DMZ for securing a corporate LAN. Demilitarized Zones (DMZ) are used to secure corporate or home networks so that malicious users on the internet can not hack into you local systems while still being about to expose your public web sites, FTP servers and game servers.
Go to article
June 22, 2004
BPML and BPEL4WS
The Business Process Modeling Initiative (BPMI) is an interesting organisation responsible for the development of three specifications, BPML (Business Processes Modeling Language), BPMN (Business Processing Modeling Notation), BPQL (Business Process Query Language). These specifications are to be used for the design and development of business processes. If you are familiar with BPEL then BPML is a superset of BPEL, for more details on the interelation then read this very short article. Also of interest is that the BPMI site has a very good list of articles about the Business Process modelling space and can be found here.
June 17, 2004
Peer-to-peer in Java
I have just found the JXTA project that is looking at building a set of standards and protocols for providing ubiquitous peer-to-peer (P2P) capabilities for Java. JXTA has been incubated and run by Sun Microsystems under the guidance of Bill Joy and Mike Clary. For a brief overview of JXTA have a read of this introduction.
XML Routers
A company called Sarvega is started to sell XML Routers that allow for XML content to be routed around a network. This allow messages like web services SOAP messages to be routed around the network based on their content. Sarvega also produce an XML Firewall to create a security layer for web services like normal firewall secure IP based networks.
Go to CNET News article for more information.
The next wave for application development
The first applications were only run on large mainframes with a limited number of users normally running batch processing. This was then replaced with the introduction of personal computers and the development of applications to run on these operating on local files. Soon applications were started to be developed that still ran locally but accessed remote databases and networked file repositories. From here we have now a trend in the development of web-based clients (eg. HTML in a browser) to deliver applications to the user, otherwise known as thin clients.
More and more you are seeing applications being developed using thin clients as the user interfaces, however there are many issues with the use of thin clients to provide dynamic or interactive applications for users. Now there is a new trend gathering momentum to use XML-based rich clients to develop applications.
Coach Wei has produced a short article on the Computerworld about XML Rich clients and this new trend.
Go to Article
June 16, 2004
Impressive Case Modification
I normally do not take much notice of computer case mods but this particular modification I am very impressed with. The creator has gone to some extreme lengths to create a very complete and spectacular case modification. The best way to understand is to just look at the photos on the site (go to site) as the photo thumbnail does not do it justice, although if you click on it you can see a larger version.
Dynamic Text Replacement
When building web pages one of the biggest problems is using a font that will be available on all the potential viewers so that it can be displayed in the browser. To get around this problem most web developers resorting to using a graphical editor and create a static graphic with the formatted text required. This works fine for text that is static and will never change, but for headings or toolbars where the text will change or you do not know what the text will be at development this static image option will not work.
One of my favorite sites A List Apart has an article that outlines another approach. Stewart Rosenberger uses an approach of a server side script to transform the text into an image that is automatically added to the page rather than a static image. This allows for any font to be used (as long as it is installed on the server) and displayed in an image dynamically.
Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)
Many organisations and vendors are now providing external interfaces to applications via web services. These web services allow external applications to access the services or interact with the internal capabilities of the application. This simple service architecture allows for the basic application interaction and integration between systems, however these simple service framework does not support coordination to support workflows where a series of web services need to be called to support a single business process.
A new standard currently under development is the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) that defines these business processes. An extension to BPEL is BPEL for Web Service (BPEL4WS) that defines how BPEL can be used to define the required workflows when using web services.
IBM has released an article that describes the use of BPEL4WS in IBM WebSphere J2EE Server. The BPEL standard can be found in a number of locations on the Internet (go here).
For a List of the different web services both IBM and Microsoft provide a list of standards:
Go to IBM Web Services Standards Page
Go to Microsoft's Web Services Standards Page
June 15, 2004
Service Oriented Architecture Design
IBM has put out a paper about the lessons learnt from initial implementation projects using Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). The paper discusses the limitations of current analysis and design tools/techniques for use in building SOA based implementations. I highly recommend reading this article if you have anything to do with developing web services for enterprises or are endeavoring to identify your business requirements to start integrating your disparate or stove-piped systems.
June 13, 2004
Blog Editing Client
I have tried a few different clients that allow me to edit my blogs but have not been impressed, until I met ecto. Blog clients allow the blog writer to edit and create blog entries using a standard desktop application rather than using the web-based interface. This allows for entries to be created while not connected to the internet or if you have a slow Internet connection it removes the painful waiting for each page to load.
ecto is a simple client for Mac OSX that provides full capabilities for editing and adding blogs. I use MoveableType of the blog system on the net and when I first started ecto is led me through a VERY easy wizard to set up the client, it even guessed correctly what blog system I was using. Once set up you are able to download a list of current entries so that you can edit them. As the editor in ecto is using the standard OSX text components spell checking is automatically provided (extremely useful for me!). The complete list of features are:
- View and edit existing entries
- Supports multiple blogs from one or more sites
- Support categories
- Preview of entries before saving
- Upload of files
- Full editing of entries (main text, extended text, summary, keywords, trackbacks, pings, date settings)
- Integrated with iTunes and iPhoto
- Advanced photo upload facility
ecto and other blog clients work by using the XML-RPC interface provided by the different blog systems. This simply allows clients to connect to the blog system by sending and receiving XML documents over HTTP requests. This is not the same as SOAP as it does not wrap these XML messages in SOAP messages.
From using ecto for a while I can not find any problems and would recommend it to any OSX blog user. You can download ecto from their home page which allows you to use the software for 2 weeks in the demo period before you have to purchase the software.
June 12, 2004
Distributed Java Web Applications
When developing Java Web Applications there are times when you need to cluster or load-share your applications to improve performance, provide better availability or create fault tolerance. There a number of approaches possible but many can not handle all cases especially when user session objects are involved. A new open-source effort has been started called WADI (Web Application Distribution Infrastructure) to provide the features required. WADI will also be included into the Apache Geronimo project when it is more complete.
Go to Greg Wilkins review of WADI
Go to WADI Homepage
Go to Apache Geronimo Homepage
Web Service Standards
There are way too many web service related standards in development or already available. For any developer new to web service of wanting to expand their abilities can easily be swamped by the numerous WS-* standards and what they are. Microsoft as part of its online MSDN library has a great site that contains information about most of these standards. The sites does not provide any way to identify which standards you should use in your application development or system integration but it does provide a way of finding information about what each of the standards contain.
Go to Microsoft Web Service Standards Site.
Why XML has been so successfull
XML was first approved by the W3C as a standard in 1998. Since then the uptake of this standard has been quick and extensive, why is this so?. Peter Abrahams on the IT-Director.com website discusses this topic and describes some of the reasons why XML has had such a great uptake. Peter discusses that the real reason that XML has done well is not because of superior technical capabilities but more about its benefits to business and commercial industry.
Go to full article
June 11, 2004
BluePhoneMenu: Bluetooth Phone Application
I have a bluetooth phone and a mac also with bluetooth, using the Apple Address Book I can pair my phone up with my mac and allow Address Book display callers when they ring or send SMS messages and that is about it. If you would like more functionality like keep a log of SMS messages and calls (like email) then have a look at BluePhoneMenu. BluePhoneMenu has all these additional features:
- Show signal strength
- Show phone battery status
- Advanced caller ID to monitor incoming calls
- Run Applescript when receiving calls (eg. to mute iTunes)
- Dial or SMS missed calls
For more information go to the BluePhoneMenu web page.
June 10, 2004
iTunes 4.6 Released
iTunes 4.6 has been released by Apple. This new version contained support for the Airtunes capability discussed in my earlier blog about the Airport Express WiFi access point / music connector.
You can download iTunes either from the website or through Software Update.
Apple Releases New Power Mac G5
Apple has released new versions of the Power Mac G5. The new versions are faster and there is a top of line is now housing a 2.5Ghz G5 processor on a 1.25Ghz Front Side Bus (FSB) and cooled by a unique water cooling system (a first for Apple). Also now the three versions of the Power Mac G5s are all dual systems. Have a look for yourself at http://www.apple.com/powermac/. Anyone out there want to buy one of these for me????
June 08, 2004
Toshiba to release laptop using Fuel Cel
Bloomberg is reporting that Toshiba will be delivering a new laptop that will be powered by Methanol allowing the laptop to run for 10 hours. I heard about these “Fuel Cells” for electronic devices about a year ago and have been hanging out for devices to start shipping using these cells. The fuel cells replace the use of batteries allowing mobile devices to run for longer. The only problem is that at the moment fuel cells are not allowed on airplanes restricting the use of such technologies.
Airport Express with Airtunes
Just released but not announced widely is the new Apple Airport Express wireless hub. This looks like a great piece of kit. Like it big brother Airport Express provides a 802.11b/g wireless hub allowing for computers to connect at 54Mb/s. What separates Airport Express though is the new iTunes extension called AirTunes. Using Airtunes you can connect the Airport Extreme directly up to you stereo (using the audio out on the Airport Express) and then control what is output using the AirTunes extension in iTunes.
Web Based WYSIWYG Editor
Ever wanted a WYSIWYG editor that you can run in a web page? Well now you can with Kupu. Kupu is a 'document-centric' open source client-side editor for Mozilla, Netscape and Internet Explorer. It uses JavaScript and DOM to create the HTML in your document so that you can edit web pages in a browser or edit documents stored on a server. It is possible to incorporate Kupu in any development project that you have. If you are interested in a demonstration of the product go here
Links:
Kupu Home Page
Kupu Demonstration (note: does not work in Safari Browser)
June 02, 2004
When You want a prototype system to look like a prototype
How many times have you displayed a new piece of software to your boss or customer that is clearly a prototype with a response of “great, now we will use this as out production system”. Well now you can make your prototypes actually look like prototypes (well for java programs). Have a look at this.
New Scientist Magazine RSS Feed
Probably the best science and technology magazines on the market is New Scientist. Well after sending an email suggesting that they should provide their news as an RSS feed (XML Syndication) I received a response saying that they already had one that was not well publicised. For all you science geeks out there hese is the RSS feed:
http://www.newscientist.com/syndication/news.rdf
June 01, 2004
Drag and Drop in a Web Page
I am developing a web application at the moment and I wanted to be able to drag and drop items in the web pages presented to the users. Having a look around the web to see if there is anything done before I found this web page. On this page Walter Zorn describes how his javascript library works with numerous examples to help demonstrate the capabilities. It also seems to be completely cross browser compatible, even working on Safari. If you find a browser that it does not support please provide a comment to this blog entry.
Go to article
Sample CSS Site
Here is the coolest site for all you Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) developers out there:
It is a wonderful site that uses a standard HTML file that has been completely marked up with divs, spans and ids but with absolutely no formatting. It then allows people to submit CSS files and graphics to display their creativity on how they can format the page. This page really shows off the power of CSS and as a plus they provide the CSS the developers use so you can see how they did it.
Categories in Apple Address Book
Apple Address book is great. It is flexible, can be expanded, accessed by external applications and you can categorise your contacts. One gripe many people have is being able to know which category a contact is already in. Well there is even a way to find this out. If you highlight a contact and then hold down the “Option” key on your keyboard you will see the categories the contact can be found in highlighted. This is just another one of the nice features that the clean apple interfaces provide.
